Ashes to Ashes, Debt to Debt: The Selling of America

The massive investment in U.S. bonds by dollar-rich countries like China, Japan, and the oil-producing Persian Gulf States, doesn’t make much economic sense if you just want more money – but it does make sense if you want to achieve political control through ownership. The rest of the world is buying America one piece of debt at a time and the knuckleheads running the U.S. government keep giving them more Dollars to do it with!

But then Congress realizes that increasing rates of foreign ownership is making them look like the corrupt goons that they are and so they raise a fuss about the fact that the rest of the world is trying to turn a losing economic investment into a profitable one by trading green and black toilet paper into something of value, like profitable U.S. companies. The latest hyperventilation is over China trying to buy a portion of network technology company 3Com, afraid that China might be able to hack into U.S. computers or something, like China can’t just buy everything they want from Cisco systems anyway.

Congress is playing with fire by antagonizing the very nations that are loaning them the money they need to pay for their wars on the federal credit card. Since overseas national investors are now having so much difficulty getting anything of real value out of the bogus money the have to take in trade with the USA they are, not surprisingly, trying to avoid using the U.S. dollar as much as possible. The U.S. dollar is in a freefall and it’s so serious that the Canadian dollar is now worth more than the U.S. Dollar!

The dollar faltered Friday [October 26, 2007] as oil prices surged to new records over $92 in overnight trading and gold futures hit their highest price since January 1980.

"There's a call to diversify holdings from the U.S. dollar," said Woolfolk. Asian central banks and other large holders of dollars-denominated investments see gold, a scarce commodity with growing demand, as a good alternative to the depreciating currency, he said.

Stock prices are rapidly inflating, commodity prices like oil and gold are skyrocketing, and it will just continue like this because it’s all denominated in U.S. Dollars that are shrinking in value and increasing in supply.

“It's all about money flow. There is money and lots of it chasing commodities and thus prices are moving higher.'' - Kyle Cooper, IAF Advisors in Houston.

Criminally Incompetent or Just Criminal?

The IED Defeat project is a beautiful example of everything that is wrong with Congress and planning by executive authorities in the United States. For $5 worth of electronics parts, and some old bombs, insurgents in Iraq have demonstrated that they can demolish any ground vehicle in the U.S. arsenal, the MRAP ‘mine-resistant’ vehicle, and even main battle tanks! So what does Congress do? Spend billions to build thousands (current orders total 8,800) of the new ‘mine-resistant’ MRAP vehicles that are only slightly safer than Humvees but cost about $1,000,000 a piece. If even an M1 main battle tank can get blown up in Iraq then there’s no protection and everything is just a wasted effort to prolong a wasteful conflict. $10 billion has been spent over the past four years to ‘defeat’ IEDs yet they continue to produce two thirds of combat casualties. Mission accomplished!

The most generous way to describe Congress is criminally incompetent, but without too much effort the case could be made for outright treason. The President, VP, Congress, Treasury, Federal Reserve, Justice Department, everything on down is a disaster. Just Alan Greenspan alone is probably the biggest force of financial corruption in U.S. history; he makes Charles Ponzi look like a Boy Scout! The Federal Reserve Chairman is supposed to be an independent and objective force for carefully managing the financial integrity of the country but Greenspan didn’t do anything like that. Instead he worked hand in glove with the political establishment to fulfill patently political objectives, abusing the monetary system like it was a giant campaign donation fund while printing money to bail out the super-rich that made terrible investment decisions. His policy of monetary inflation has made the rich richer, the poor poorer and the economic order far less stable. Following Greenspan’s disastrous lead, central Banks across the world, fearing the collapse of their fiat currency scam are in the process of selling massive hordes of their gold to buy paper currency! If ever there was an insane investment that would qualify. But they need to keep the price of gold low in relation to their national currencies otherwise gold will become an attractive alternative and they will lose the central bank luxury of printing new cash at will. So now it’s a race to the bottom in value. Damn right they’re scared, and even as much as they’re dumping on the world market the price of gold keeps rising. Confidence is slipping fast.

In the meantime the US can keep getting away with it because many foreign nations are still willing to loan money to the USA, so willing that is pushes down the interest rate that the US government has to pay on the debt and the less the bond holders gain in return for their investment.

OPEC members increased their holdings of Treasuries 12 percent this year through July to $123.8 billion, Treasury Department data show. The prospect that OPEC's share of U.S. debt is growing is based on the 31 percent rise in oil since December, which will raise OPEC revenue 5.1 percent to $635 billion this year and 9.4 percent to $695 billion in 2008, according to estimates by the U.S. Department of Energy. [1]

This volume of purchasing is not about financial return, it’s not a particularly wise investment at al, but it is about political power, it is a powerful strategic investment because money buys influence and ownership confers control. Eventually these foreign countries will hold so much of America’s loans that the federal government will have no choice but to concede to the demands of international creditors – like the IMF and World Bank in reverse! How’s that for irony?

OPEC has so much influence in the Treasury market that the 10-year Treasury note had its biggest decline since June on Sept. 20 after London's Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that Saudi Arabia may stop linking its currency to the dollar. [1]

But one thing to always remember: the dollar market is very liquid and it can change instantly. These poor-performing petro-dollar bonds can, will, and are being converted into more profitable assets.

Among foreign holders only Japan, China and the U.K. own more Treasuries than the 12 members of OPEC, which supplies more than 40 percent of the world's crude. [1]

Global Hyperinflation

All the current indicator point to the fact that we are in the beginning states of worldwide currency hyperinflation. China now has $1.4 trillion U.S. Dollars in reserves and they’re accumulating more so fast they don’t know what to do with it. [2] What happens when China has 10 trillion dollars, 100 trillion? What happens when OPEC has 10 trillion dollars in U.S. debt? Where does it stop? It doesn’t! The irony is that it’s a self-perpetuating scam. Very few bond producers are big enough to soak up the massive quantity of dollars in global circulation besides the U.S. federal government. Most other countries are either too small or not foolish enough to deficit spend on a huge scale. The federal government won’t stop spending like crazy as long as the world keeps funding them at 5% interest. So more and more dollars flood the world and gold goes to $800 and ounce, 1000, 10,000, 100,000 and so on. Oil 50, 100, 500, 1,000 a barrel, why not?
Free investment tip: buy precious metals and a wheelbarrow for your Dollars; well, better make that a dump truck. 11.07

1. Treasuries Fueled by Petrodollars From Mideast Funds, by Daniel Kruger, Bloomberg news, October 9, 2007.
2. China agonizes over its fistful of dollars, by Scott Zhou, Asia Times, October 26, 2007.

Death of the Dollar, Rebirth of America

The federal government has been spending far more than it receives in revenue for decades but it has become appreciably worse since 2001. Under the errant guidance of President George W. Bush's administration the federal debt limit has been raised four times and the Treasury Secretary recently announced that the federal government will be out of money by October 1, 2007 unless Congress increases the maximum national debt level again, this time to $9,820,000,000,000! Obviously that much debt has to be funded by someone somewhere and since the American public is already in it deep, and corporate America is built on its own pile of debt, that only leaves other more fiscally prudent locations overseas to provide the capital to keep the United States solvent. China alone now holds an estimated $1.5 trillion in reserves, most of it in U.S. government bonds. This certainly is an astronomical amount of money but it’s an absolutely terrible investment because inflation is rapidly eating away at the value of those dollars.

The Ten Rules for Members of Congress

September 2007

Uncontrolled Inflation

In 2001 the U.S. national debt was (only!) about $6.2 trillion and the current maximum limit is about $9 trillion. That’s $3 trillion new dollars added to the world economy in just six years. So much new debt so quickly leads to inflation because more dollars are chasing roughly the same amount of products and services; prices naturally rise because they can. This inflation is becoming very serious indeed but you wouldn’t know it from the official government statistics because, get this, they have been structured to hide the inflation! Housing prices have been rapidly rising until just recently, with price inflation rates of 10-15% a year, or more, in many places. Are housing prices measured in official inflation? Nope. Food and fuel are the other obvious inflation factors with prices rapidly rising for both at an increasing pace. Are food and fuel part of the official inflation statistics? Nah, that would look bad, and besides it would cost the federal treasury a heap of money since every price increase connected to inflation, like Social Security payments and pay raises for federal employees, would have to increase accordingly. Ouch!

Ironic Tribute No.73

August 2004

Inflation is a major headache for everyone else around the world that has to take dollars in trade. Since oil is denominated in U.S. dollars the oil exporting Gulf States have a real problem. More and more dollars are chasing the same amount of oil so prices naturally rise and this is largely why the price of crude oil is in record territory, over $80 per barrel, not so much because of lack of supply. If OPEC and most every other oil-exporter had a choice they would switch to the Euro, an appreciating currency, as standard trade payment for their commodity but the last poor slob that tried to do that was Saddam’s Iraq, and we all know what the USA did to him. Since the Gulf States can’t get paid in a respectable currency they have to convert their mountains of dollars into real assets, like companies and real-estate, at an increasingly frenetic pace to try and outrun inflation.

Astonishingly this era of mega-inflation can be traced back to just one man: Alan Greenspan. During his entire nineteen years (1987-2006) as Federal Reserve Chairman he doesn’t seem to have ever missed a chance to expand the money supply. Stock market investors and Presidents in need of a quick boost during election season loved his formula of low interest rates and loads of liquidity. Easy money seemed like a winning formula for awhile but not anymore. Greenspan is directly responsible for generating the speculative bubbles that characterize the casino economy of 21st century international capitalism. Congress also shares much of the blame for the damaging effects of this loose fiscal policy since they write the federal checks, even if in practice they usually just serve as a rubber-stamp for the President. Nonetheless Greenspan, if he had really been an independent caretaker of national monetary policy, could have stopped it, or at least slowed it down.

It’s fairly clear by now that nobody really wants to trade in U.S. dollars, a currency that is rapidly losing value, if they can avoid it but switching to a solid currency, like the Euro, just isn’t that easy. Having played the game as it is now for 60 years export-oriented economies have accumulated large reserves, mostly in US government bonds, and any decline in the U.S. dollar means major financial losses for the poor suckers stuck holding America’s debt.

World Order of the U.S. Dollar: How it Works

The United States has purposely engineered the world economy to revolve around, guess who?, the USA of course! In this mono-polar economic order the United States produces the capital (the miracle of the printing press) and the rest of the world trades it for manufactured products. The manufacturing countries get jobs, low paying of course but still employment for restive and large populations, and the U.S. consumers get loads of cheap junk thereby keeping them entertained, distracted, and politically neutralized. Having engineered this mono-polar economic order over the past 60 years America is, if anything, a victim of their own success having eliminated all rivals and competition that could have been the basis of a more equitable, and far more stable, multi-polar economic trading network, but I digress. It all goes back to the waning years of World War II when the U.S. conveniently entered the conflict when it could win the most at the expense of everyone else that was busy fighting an insane war into the flaming rubble of the bitter end. Germany, Japan, and even England were economically ruined; the U.S. rebuilt them as manufacturing exporters for the U.S. marketplace with all payments in, you guessed it, U.S. dollars.

With the model in place soon other nations like South Korea and Taiwan fell into line doing the same thing. The exporting nations were like big fat fish hungry and desperate for a meal. Some of them took the bait and got hooked because they didn’t have much choice, like Germany and Japan, but all of them allowed their economies to be remote controlled by American planners to suit American needs. It is true that many of the exporters, particularly the oil exporting nations, have greatly gained from this system of Dollar hegemony and the more prudent governments have wisely invested in strategic development - expanding internal infrastructure and creating a sustainable post-oil economy. But we have to remember that for many decades oil and most other commodity prices were very low, and this is one of the main reasons why OPEC was formed and why the commodity exporting countries of Central and South America have been desperately poor for decades despite their resource wealth.

Sure, the bait tasted great for awhile but now the benefits are disappearing and they’re left with the hook caught in their mouth and an uneasy feeling of impending doom if they can't break free soon. It’s too late for them to change the model and stop exporting because their economies will collapse and the only country that has an economy large enough to absorb all their exports is the USA that wants everything in dollars. But if the exporters dump the dollar then the USA won’t be able to buy their exports. The only way for the hooked fish to escape is to tip America’s boat over and wreck the whole established economic order, yet that means they would have to totally rearrange their own economies and risk social turmoil in the process.

Instability Portends Change

The pace is quickening and this financial order will not last very much longer. The US dollar is falling even faster now because the Federal Reserve has cut interest rates (September 2007) in order to keep a weakening economy alive amidst a credit crisis brought on through massive, widespread debt levels and reckless lending patterns by banks and other financial institutions. The foreign capital needed to sustain the U.S. is drying up as low interest rates make it a less desirable investment destination. Now all the exporting countries are going to have to lower their own interest rates too in a race to keep their currency low compared to the dollar so they can keep selling stuff to Americans. This is the reason behind the absurdity of Europe wanting a weak currency even though they have, horror of horrors, a strong and well managed economy that pushes up the value of the Euro. It doesn’t make sense that the European Union and the other major economies, like Japan, don’t want what they should want: a strong currency that indicates a strong economy. Instead they all want a weak currency because they want to sell cheap stuff that American consumers can afford to purchase with their depreciating dollars.

This pattern will eventually lead to the collapse of the US dollar as it hyper-inflates away into oblivion and America drowns in debt, unable to pay for increasingly expensive imported merchandise. Capitalism is unlikely to fundamentally change due to this new situation but the flow of capital and the overall trading pattern will. America will finally have to rebuild its own manufacturing base that has been eviscerated and shipped overseas and worldwide economic events will compel a genuine change of government within the United States, indeed even a revolution. The world will finally switch to a multi-polar trading pattern, a more normal state of events with more equitable trade of capital and products between states. But this can’t happen until the US dollar, the dominant currency of the world, can no longer ruin all rivals. Everything America does, like invade Iraq or bomb Afghanistan, follows from that economic hegemony. The USA has the most to lose and they will fight to the bitter end to destroy all economic rivals. It may get ugly: a desperate empire is a dangerous empire.

Nonetheless, behind the smoke and beyond the turmoil the future never looked brighter. We are likely to witness the most significant politico-economic shift in power of the last 100 years. Mao once said that political power grows from the barrel of a gun; America’s power grows from the almighty dollar. Over the past 100 years we’ve progressed from a world order based on intimidation and fear through violence into a world based on subterfuge and coercion through capital. Once the Dollar Empire is dead we will be able to progress beyond both into a more rational age where interactions are more transparent and equitable; a  new era where no one entity can dominate everyone else. 22&23.09.07

Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Hate Iran

September 2007

A-Bomb So Nice They Dropped it Twice

We are often told, and It is generally believed, that the two atomic bombs dropped on Imperial Japan in August 1945 were necessary to end World War II and to secure U.S. victory. This widely accepted narrative survives today because it is repeated over and over not because it is historically accurate. An excellent article written on this important aspect of American (and world) history is titled ‘The Decision to Risk the Future: Harry Truman, the Atomic Bomb and the Apocalyptic Narrative’, by Peter J. Kuznick.

The military victors establish the official history concerning what happens during wars and we have to remember that when we read the narrative on any major historical event. So, although it's also true that Imperial Japan was a vicious war machine that brutality subjugated and enslaved everyone in their path, and it seems completely logical to assume that if Japan had atomic weapons they would have had no qualms in using them, the atomic bombing of Japan is not supposed to have been an act of revenge. Instead the standard narrative claims the bombing was done out of military necessity in order to force Japan’s leaders to surrender and to save American lives by obviating the need to invade that nation.

In fact the U.S. government did not have to use the atom bombs on Japan in World War II and doing so served no significant military objective. By 1945 Japan’s imminent defeat was painfully obvious to Japan’s wartime leaders. Before the atomic attacks America had been fire-bombing cities across Japan for months, wreaking fantastic devastation and loss of human life, and two atom bombs was not going to alter the outcome of a war where defeat for Japan was clearly inevitable.

General Douglas MacArthur told former President Herbert Hoover that, if Truman had acted upon Hoover’s May 30, 1945 memo and changed the surrender terms, the war would have ended months earlier. “That the Japanese would have accepted it and gladly,” he averred, “I have no doubt.” Hoover believed the Japanese would have negotiated as early as February.

Using the atom bombs did not make Japan sign a peace deal any faster then they were going to anyway, and did not save any American lives as is often claimed.

Top U.S. military leaders recognized Japan’s growing desperation, prompting several to later insist that the use of atomic bombs was not needed to secure victory. Those who believed that dropping atomic bombs on Japan was morally repugnant and/or militarily unnecessary included Admiral William Leahy, General Dwight Eisenhower, General Douglas MacArthur, General Curtis LeMay, General Henry Arnold, Brigadier General Bonner Fellers, Admiral Ernest King, General Carl Spaatz, Admiral Chester Nimitz, and Admiral William “Bull” Halsey.

The U.S. government didn’t just attack military targets in Japan using the atomic bombs, they intentionally used them on populated areas to test the psychological and physical effects on the civilian population!

Brigadier General Carter Clarke, who was in charge of preparing MAGIC summaries in 1945, later stated, “we brought them down to an abject surrender through accelerated sinking of their merchant marine and hunger alone, and when we didn’t need to do it, and we knew we didn’t need to do it, and they knew we knew we didn’t need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs.” ...

Admiral William Leahy angrily told an interviewer in 1949 that although Truman told him they would “only…hit military objectives….they went ahead and killed as many women and children as they could which was just what they wanted all the time.”

Admiral Leahy, President Truman’s personal chief of staff, stated: “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. ... My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.”

Eisenhower was equally appalled, writing in his 1963 Mandate for Change that when he learned from Stimson at Potsdam that use of the bomb was imminent, “I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face.’” ...

Other military leaders drew similar conclusions about the imminence of Japanese surrender without use of atomic bombs. Air Force Chief of Staff General Henry Arnold wrote, “it always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse.” General Curtis LeMay argued that his conventional bombing had already ended the war: “Even without the atomic bomb and the Russian entry into the war, Japan would have surrendered in two weeks.” Brigadier General Bonner Fellers wrote shortly after VJ day: “Neither the atomic bombing nor the entry of the Soviet Union into the war forced Japan’s unconditional surrender. She was defeated before either of these events took place.” ...

 Undersecretary of the Navy Ralph Bard, the Navy representative to the Interim Committee, recommended, before leaving the government on July 1, that the U.S. not use the bombs without warning given the clear evidence that Japan was already militarily defeated and trying to surrender and the devastating blow that would be struck by the Soviet declaration of war. Such considerations led Admiral Leahy to conclude that an invasion would not have been necessary. Leahy explained, “I was unable to see any justification, from a national-defense point of view, for an invasion of an already thoroughly defeated Japan.”

Dropping the first atomic weapons in combat was a decision that carried enormous significance on multiple levels yet President Harry Truman was such a vacuous warmonger that he ignored the advice of his experts and Generals and ordered the attacks without even giving it a second thought! No wonder George W, Bush admires Truman so much! Having already incinerated millions in firebombing campaigns over cities in Europe and Japan Truman probably figured adding a few hundred thousand more to the pile wasn’t going to make any difference as far as he was concerned anyway. Josef Stalin encapsulated this line of reasoning when he said, ‘the death of one is a tragedy, the death of millions a statistic.’

Not only did Truman rely on fervent proponents of using the bomb, he ignored the entreaties of Stimson, State Department Japan expert and former Ambassador Joseph Grew, Admiral William Leahy, Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy, and other knowledgeable insiders who urged him to change the surrender terms and inform the Japanese that they could keep the emperor. Indeed, this is precisely what the U.S. ultimately did—but only after dropping the two atomic bombs in the US arsenal. Several scholars have argued that such modifications of surrender terms could have significantly expedited Japanese surrender, saving numerous Japanese and American lives, and obviating use of the bombs, especially if combined with announcement of the impending Soviet declaration of war, a development that Japanese leaders dreaded. …

On his way back from Potsdam aboard the USS Augusta, Truman received news that the city of Hiroshima had been virtually wiped off the map. He proclaimed that “This is the greatest thing in history!” There is little evidence that, despite his statements indicating awareness of the forces he had unleashed, he ever gave the bomb decision the serious thought it deserved. In 1946, when MGM sent him a copy of the script of its upcoming docudrama about the production and use of the bomb, The Beginning or the End, for his approval, Truman voiced no objection to the scene where he decides to drop the bomb. It was only the insistence of Walter Lippmann, who during a subsequent screening found the president’s flip decision “shocking,” that stirred the White House to request changes. The original version appears to have been more authentic. When an interviewer asked Truman whether the decision was morally difficult to make, he responded, “Hell no, I made it like that,” snapping his fingers. In fact, Truman never publicly acknowledged doubts or misgivings. When Edward R. Murrow asked him in a 1958 interview if he had any regrets about using the bomb or about any of his other presidential decisions, Truman responded, “Not the slightest--not the slightest in the world.”

People like Truman are still in charge of the show sixty years later so it’s no wonder America’s absolutely futile war on Iraq has been grinding on for almost five years now with no end, or victory, in sight. Democrat or Republican if they have the power these 'public servants' will use it, and not use it wisely but abuse it to the fullest extent possible. Probably the only reason that nuclear weapons were not used in combat during the Cold War was because the top leaderships realized that to do so would negatively impact upon their own personal lifestyles – they would be living in an underground bunker eating cans of Spam for the rest of their lives! Top authorities used nuclear weapons in every other way they could get away with.

“Again and again, generally in secret from the American public, U.S. nuclear weapons have been used, for quite different purposes: in the precise way that a gun is used when you point it at someone’s head in a direct confrontation, whether or not the trigger is pulled.” - Daniel Ellsberg

The atomic attacks on Japan make very little sense militarily but from a geopolitical perspective it seems likely that Truman intended to scare Stalin and deter the Soviet Union from further military aggression after Germany and Japan were crushed, as historian Gore Vidal maintains. But in fact this plan backfired badly for the United States and the entire world because it ushered in a new and highly unstable era threatening the entire planet with nuclear annihilation. Simply testing the atomic bomb in public was entirely sufficient to demonstrate this new destructive capacity to the USSR but by dropping not just one but two atomic bombs on a defeated wartime victim Truman demonstrated that the United States' political leadership was not just willing but eager to use nuclear weapons! The real message was obvious to Stalin: get your own atom bombs as fast as you can. Far from securing an American victory Truman’s order to strike Japan with atomic weapons was the starter pistol for the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. 04.08.07

The Greatest Game Show on Earth!

April 2007

The United States was established as a Republic to be defended by a citizen militia - never by a permanently staffed career army. That was the idea behind the National Guard, probably the only military force in the United States that has any Constitutional legitimacy, a part-time citizen militia that is under the control of the State governors and only placed under the control of the President during a national crisis. The reasoning against a full-time military should be clear by now: a standing military is an open invitation for wars of imperial aggression and conflicts for profit and it will eventually lead to a dictatorial president and corrupt Congress. And that’s exactly what the United States has today.

This all started because of World War II, specifically the fact that the soldiers were not completely demobilized at the end of the conflict as they had been after previous wars. This standing army obviously needed something to do to justify a continued existence hence the Korean War, then Vietnam, and so on. At least during these conflicts most of the soldiers were drafted into service and that put a brake on how far the Executive branch of government could drag the American people along in war. Vietnam changed that. Widespread public resistance to a horribly brutal and futile conflict forced a shattered Army with its prestige in tatters to rebuild as an all volunteer force. By only employing volunteers the U.S. military removed the last resistance factor to opportunistic warfare and today the military is just a mercenary corps that refers to the President as their Commander in Chief and will salute and shoot at whatever he tells them to kill as long as their paychecks keep coming. Anyone that doesn’t agree with this situation will leave and be replaced by someone that doesn’t think as much and is more willing to follow orders without asking questions. 18.02.07

America and Israel: Locked in a Spiral of Self-Destruction

The official government accounting office estimates the latest total expense for the ‘War on Terrorism’ is now up to $430 billion. What do we have to show for it? Well folks I’m pleased to announce that your tax dollars have been hard at work and now we are just days away from finally defeating all those evil terrorists that hate freedom, peace, long walks on the beach, cute little fuzzy animals, and want to kill all your loved ones too. Terrorism won’t be interrupting your television-viewing schedule anymore because America has won! But first America just needs a few more dollars, so keep those pledges coming and we’ll beat those bastards once and for all, yes, just a few more of them to assassinate and blow up with high explosives and then terrorism will vanish forever…

At the same time another report is released from the Federal Reserve that paints a convincing portrait of America bankrupt. So it seems America, under the prudent fiscal guidance of the unsuccessful businessman named George W. Bush, is in a race to try and defeat terrorism before it goes belly up financially. Brilliant.

Israel is continually touted as a beacon of hope, freedom, democracy and capitalist opportunity in the Middle East. So, some people in Israel have enough sense to recognize the foolishness of their government's current policies and attempt to try some of the freedom and democracy by staging a protest in support of peace, then the police move in to break it up. Where’s the democracy here? Where are the alternative voices to more war and more invasions? From the look of it they’re in jail or In front of a judge trying to explain their attempt to use the democracy they supposedly have.

Back in heartland American, replete with all its wisdom and unselfish understanding of world affairs, many Americans glued to the tube wonder aloud at the foolishness of Hezbollah for inciting the wrath of Israel, but who’s really crazy? At least Hezbollah has a plan, Israel just reacts in a blind rage while repeating the same policies from the past forty years that have consistently failed. So they invade Lebanon and occupy the southern strip, how is this different than the 1980s? How is the outcome going to be more favorable to Israel this time? It’s just more of the same, occupying land illegally and creating more enemies to Israel. Crush, kill, occupy, assassinate, oppress: repeat as needed. What of the Golan Heights? What about the spreading illegal settlements in the West Bank? Now that doesn't factor in?! According to this logic Israel must occupy all of the Middle East from the border of Austria to India and then they'll have a safe buffer zone and no one will be able to harm them. Maybe it’s past time to stop trying to kill neighbors and to finally realize that the only way peace can be achieved for Israel is to try and live with them instead of dropping bombs on them?

The state of Israel is the little terrorist that never grew up. They are a country that was founded using terrorist tactics against the pre-existing Arab population and has now acquired massive militarily power, yet Israel still behaves as if it operated from a position of fundamental weakness. This is why they conduct terrorist actions that are so low not even their opponents follow them, such as assassinating leaders using bombs from warplanes, missiles from helicopter gunships, and spies delivering poison, or using collective punishment and terror tactics on entire populations such as bombing the power plant in Gaza recently or flying warplanes at supersonic speeds back and forth over the occupied territories to psychologically assault the people struggling to survive there.

Of course you won’t get the information that is really important from CNN or Fox news, they won’t deliver any factual history to establish context for the public to objectively judge current events, all they deliver are rehashed propaganda statements from official outlets, death toll figures, and echo chamber commentary from pseudo-experts on the payroll. Isn’t if amazing that the historical memory of so many American’s only extends back to the latest action on the part of the Palestinians or Hezbollah, or Iran thus neatly making Israel always the innocent party? This fractional reasoning is so absurd it can only be the product of a massive campaign of biased rhetoric. Even a cursory overview of historical events clearly shows both sides guilty of intransigence, but even then the power balance in this conflict is totally disproportion in favor of Israel. Israel has the money, Israel has the political influence, and Israel is bristling with every kind of modern weapon imaginable, the onus of responsibility is on their shoulders not rag tag bands of rebels like Hamas in Gaza that have been marginalized and pounded into the rubble.

Israel likes to think of itself as the smartest guy in the neighborhood but their policies make the Soviet Empire look subtle and nuanced in comparison! If the Israeli leadership were in charge of the USSR they wouldn’t just roll the tanks into Prague they’d bomb the hell out of Czechoslovakia! This isn’t a smart country, this is a country pushed from the bottom by a public that is scared out of their minds while being dragged from the top by a political leadership that consists of fools of supreme magnitude, and Generals that have an obsession with revenge and the size of their guns.

“Hezbollah started it”

Hezbollah may have triggered the latest battle by kidnapping two Israeli soldiers but they sure didn’t start the war, regardless, pinning all the blame on Hezbollah is completely disingenuous. And of course Hezbollah in Lebanon is just a little puppet controlled by the evil big daddy Iran. It’s just inconceivable that Hezbollah is actually a popular indigenous movement in Lebanon that fills a vacuum for social services that are not being met by anyone else in the region. Yeah right, so hey, invading Lebanon to attack a supposed extension of Iran, that’s not a pretext or anything to expand the war against Iran and Syria like the kidnapping of the Israeli soldiers was a pretext to start a war on Lebanon. Sure Israeli soldiers have been seized before and the Israeli government hasn’t had any trouble bargaining for their release back then, but now things are different, now a golden opportunity for military adventurism exists and the IDF in unholy conjunction with the new political leadership in Israel would simply be remiss in their exploitative duties if they passed this one up.

The truth is that Hezbollah was founded in direct response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon back in 1982. If Israel hadn’t blown Lebanon to hell, sponsored their civil war and invaded that sovereign country then Hezbollah would never have had the justification to form in the first place. How many new Hezbollah’s will spawn as a result of Israel’s current assault? Hezbollah fills a desperate need of Shiite Muslims in Lebanon for basic social services and community defense. The fact that they are politically militant and well organized is just a reflection of a survival tactic for a people under siege. Groups under attack look for friends and allies wherever they can find them and if Iran and Syria want to help then why would they turn that down? An Israel that attacks Lebanon will only enhance the solidarity of not just Shiite Muslims but also Sunni Muslims everywhere in their resistance to the gross imbalance of force between Israel and neighboring nations. That’s part of the plan that Hezbollah has in play. They know that Israel will run amok in Lebanon, killing innocent non-combatants and destroying civilian infrastructure in an orgy of war crimes. Even granting that Israel has the right to defend itself that doesn't mean they have license to go 'apeshit' and slaughter everyone in sight. An irrational and disproportionate military response plays directly into the hands of Israel's opponents. Israel on the rampage is its own worst enemy.

The second goal in Hezbollah’s strategy is to form a unified front with Palestinian resistance groups, specifically Hamas. Even though Hamas is Sunni Muslim by operating a two front conflict it begins to strain the capacity of the IDF. The third goal is to unambiguously demonstrate to the people of Lebanon which side the Bush administration is really on. Does America really support the new independent and sovereign Lebanon or do they actually support Israel and everything the State Department has done to help Lebanon reform its government is just a sham? The answer is clear. The Lebanese government pleaded for world assistance to stop Israel as they tore apart the country but Bush instead used all his political muscle to block any effort to stop or even slow down Israel’s military operation. Indeed, what does 'democracy' really mean coming from the Bush administration?

Washington in particular makes cynical claim to be concerned with preserving the democratic government of Lebanon against those who seek its destruction. Hezbollah is, in fact, part of that government. It is Lebanon’s largest single political party with mass support amongst the Shia population that predominates in the south. It has two government ministers, and 23 MPs who are part of a 35-strong opposition grouping. As well as its parliamentary presence, Hezbollah runs a range of social services, including hospitals and schools, on which hundreds of thousands rely.

The forces that are actually seeking to topple a democratically elected government are not to be found in Damascus and Tehran, but in Washington, Tel Aviv and London. These are the real architects of an illegal war of aggression to bring about regime change.

The Bush administration has given Israel carte blanche to perpetrate war crimes, even when the lives of its own citizens are threatened. This is the clear implication of the remarks by US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, when asked to comment on the deaths of eight Canadian citizens in an Israeli air strike July 16. - Chris Marsden for WSWS July 22, 2006.

Hezbollah has shown Lebanon, and others, that the one true allegiance of the American government is to Israel and no one should be fooled into believing otherwise. In fact, the Bush administration is so totally allied with Israel that they are not only willing turn on a dime and sacrifice the compliant Lebanese government they helped build but to sacrifice every other relationship America has on the world stage!

"Everywhere the Bush administration is being less attended to. Everywhere, others are sharpening their knives, loading their weapons, and preparing to smite their enemies, inspired by the US example, liberated by its failure." - Tom Engelhardt, July 18, 2006

The deleterious consequences of America’s blind and foolish allegiance to Israel, at the expense of everyone else, cannot be understated. International support for the United States is at a breaking point and soon it could become an avalanche as everyone from Turkey to South Korea bail out on the relationship entirely, recognizing the rapidly decline in US influence on world events while keenly aware of the rising domestic pressure driving them away from the unilateral policies of the Bush administration and its unquestioning support for the brutality of Israel’s military machine run amok. Supporting the United States as a problematic and mercurial ally just isn’t worth it anymore, and once one leaves the rest will follow.

The fourth goal of Hezbollah is to split the Muslim public away from the highly oppressive police state regimes in power over them in countries such as Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. These countries have governments that are being sponsored and protected by the American government, and by extension Israel too, and hold policies that are very unpopular on the street. America’s highly unpopular and bloody invasion and occupation of Iraq has, metaphorically, thrown gasoline all over the Middle East and now all Hezbollah has to do is light the match and throw. Watch the demonstrations and protests carefully; they will indicate the severity of the unrest and the stability, or lack of it, that these regimes have in controlling their restive populations. What happens when the dam breaks?

This is a major conflict with widespread ramifications and it appears certain to spread further before it is over. The war plan (suicide pact would be a more apt description) devised and promoted by war hawks and Zionist Neocons is already known and it points towards an attack on Syria and Iran too. The propaganda campaign to mold public opinion in support of this is nothing short of relentless.  But just because these people get their war doesn’t mean they will win it. Israel has repeatedly demonstrated an inability to adapt to changing circumstances, unlike the smaller and more nimble resistance groups such as Hezbollah. Iran and especially Syria have actually demonstrated some savvy decision-making in the recent past, and even though they are comparatively weak in a military sense, success or failure in this conflict doesn’t hinge upon military superiority as events in Iraq and Afghanistan have clearly shown.

Who’s Really in Charge Here?

The issue of which party is really in charge becomes unavoidable at this point. Is it the United States that calls the shots, or is it Israel? Perhaps it doesn’t even matter anymore since the two countries are so closely intertwined but nevertheless one of the most revealing factors is the fact that America has multiple levers of influence it can use to limit Israel’s behavior yet the American government consistently refuses to use any of them even after Israel conducts the most egregious actions that directly damage the interests and values of America. Let’s start with the cash. Israel is the largest recipient of United States’ foreign aid. Just the grants to Israel now total some 2.3 billion dollars a year, not to mention the loans and weapons deals. Israel uses cutting edge weaponry, primarily supplied by the United States, and such weapons sales (or donations) stipulate that the weapons can only be used in cases of clear self-defense and internal security. The assault on Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure, from power plants to bridges, is in an unambiguous contravention of this agreement. What happens as a consequence? Nothing. It’s difficult to even argue that the military contractors that make the equipment given to Israel are making money off the deal because Israel is notorious for reverse-engineering and reselling American weapons technology.

'So What?!'

In less than six years the Bush administration, and the swarm of flies that hover around and feed off of it, have managed to flush America down the toilet. They have abrogated and trashed major defense and security treaties, sent wasteful and foolish spending through the roof, sent political corruption to record levels, while intentionally undermining the crucial system of checks and balances on Executive authority. Even more insidious and directly harmful to you the reader, they have steadily eroded America’s competitive advantages all the while actively working to manipulate and distort the information the public learns so as to deceive them about what is really occurring!

America is rapidly falling behind other countries in things as diverse as broadband Internet access, modern steel production, and cutting edge biotech research. So much federal money has been diverted to supporting the military industrial complex that just about everything else has been neglected. And the technology and brainpower that America does develop gets shipped off to foreign countries for them to develop, market and profit from.

Yes, while people are watching the fireworks display on TV a major geopolitical shift in gravity is occurring and the majority of American’s could not be less aware of what is really going on. There’s no better example of how the American public is treated like a farm of mushrooms, kept in the dark and fed a steady diet of shit, by the mass media and the political leadership class than the profound events going on in Asia, specially the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). You will search long and hard to find any mention of the SCO in the domestic American media but when you read material from overseas you will find out that it is a very important cooperative organization on economic and political issues between Russia, China and central Asian countries with many more eager to join. Just recently they setup a deal to run a natural gas pipeline through Iran and Pakistan to India and eventually to China. Did you read about that before?

Russia and China are getting richer by the day thanks to high oil and natural gas prices and factory production; they're smart, organized, and they don’t act brash or try and fool themselves or anyone else. What a concept. 22.07.06

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'Everybody Hates Hezbollah'

It recently leaked out that the Bush administration was in the process of fulfilling an urgent request from Israel for more bombs. What's that sound? It must be Osama bin Laden roaring with laughter! He couldn't pray for a better ally supporting his cause than the one he has in President George W. Bush. This President has handed bin Laden everything he wanted on a silver platter and now it’s time for the coup de grace: a rush shipment of American made bombs sent special delivery to Israel so they can kill more Lebanese!

From now on every war crime and atrocity Israel commits, every infant killed as 'collateral damage', every apartment complex that is demolished, it will all be synonymous with the United States. Israel may as well just paint the stars and stripes on their bombs and drop leaflets that read: ‘Carnage courtesy of the people of the United States’. The cat is out of the bag this time; no longer can America pose as an impartial third party and convince anyone but Americans. This kind of announcement will undercut American influence around the world but most notably it will make Iraq even more dangerous for American soldiers and it will erode the already weak ally, Karzai, in charge over Afghanistan. The direct and overt support of Israel in its effort to attack an Arab nation, regardless of the official pretext, undercuts every other Arab government on the American payroll, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, now they have lost a significant amount of public respect because of their association with America.

Is this ‘mission accomplished’ or what?

Israel has bombed a milk production factory and a Procter & Gamble distribution warehouse, as well as telecommunications towers, according to the Wall Street Journal newspaper, and of course just about every other element of Lebanon’s civil infrastructure.

“Israel is committing serious crimes against humanity. They are fragmenting the country piece by piece.” - Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

Here are some numbers for context: the number of Lebanese killed by Israel so far totals 380. The IDF claims it has killed 100 Hezbollah members. So according to the official figures that makes 380-100=280 innocent casualties in Lebanon. What about Israel? Hezbollah’s rockets have killed 17 Israeli civilians and 19 soldiers have died in combat. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization estimates that 600,000 Lebanese have been displaced by the conflict. Source: New York Times July 24, 2006. Lebanon’s Minister for transport and public works, Mohammad Safadi, estimates that Israel has damaged 80% of his countries major highways and 95% of the bridges. The cost of rebuilding will total many billions of dollars. Who will pay for this?

A fair fight this is not, yet the symbol of injustice that this represents only serves to perpetuate and inflame the wider conflict, ultimately strengthening groups like Hezbollah. Also ironic is that in their zeal for unilateral action based on threats, intimidation and direct military force, the Bush administration has severed every avenue of dialogue with the parties that actually have influence over Hezbollah, namely Syria and Iran. All they can do is make ineffectual demands against the governments of Saudi Arabia and Egypt to influence Hezbollah to disarm!

Why take sides in a foreign conflict?

Why are people like Dick Cheney and George Bush so enamored with the blunt application of raw military force? Why are they so enthralled with military states like Israel? Vice President Cheney went so far as to take ownership of Israel’s assault on Lebanon using the pretext of neutralizing Hezbollah as further justification for his grand ‘War on Terrorism’. "It's going to be a battle that will last for a very long time. It is absolutely essential that we stay the course.''

These people are the supreme authoritarians, the respect raw force more than anything else. They see life as a boxing match and they want to be on the side of the winner. Life is actually more like a chess match but chess requires planning and deep thinking and it’s just so much easier to shoot off your gun and pretend you know what you're doing. This is why they never learned the lessons from the Vietnam fiasco because they cannot let go of the belief that superior military might always wins the battle. They just cannot fathom that America lost in Southeast Asia despite having the biggest and best weapons. So to this day they still blame everyone that doesn’t deserve it, they blame the media for losing the war, they blame the war protestors, they blame the warfare doctrine, they blame the Soviet Union and China, they even blame the Vietnamese!

Everyone else from Machiavelli to Mao figured it out long ago: military superiority does not necessarily create political victory, but these authoritarians are dense as two planks so they keep repeating the same mistakes and everyone else has to suffer for it. Looks like we need more chess players and fewer boxers making the decisions. 24.07.06

Precision Strike

July 2006

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It’s too early to tell exactly how the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah will turn out but one thing is already clear: the world order is ever more rapidly tumbling farther from equilibrium. It also seems increasingly apparent that the minimal gains Israel can extract from their conflict are miniscule in comparison to the dangers that will emerge from their intentional destabilization of the situation. The parallels to George Bush’s military adventurism in Iraq are inescapable. Lebanon is to Israel what Iraq is to the United States: quagmire and comeuppance. Both foolish wars were fomented by the same delusions driving similar maniacs; they dig their own grave while convincing themselves they are searching for gold.

The shrieking mantra of these authoritarians is ‘victory through torture and success through superior brutality’. The false success of their method is already self-evident but they will not stop until a resistance movement of sufficient strength forces them to stop. In the meantime the United States, Israel, and every country that decides to hitch to it is part of a speeding passenger train headed for cliff. America and Israel will take everyone on board over the edge.

"I have two sons and I will allow none of my children to serve in the United States Military. If you join the military now you are not defending the United States of America. You are helping certain policymakers pursue and imperial agenda." - Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski (USAF Ret.) ~2005

The U$ military should be abolished and dismantled before it is too late, if it isn’t already, because it has become just a tool for the blunt expression of Executive power. America was intended to be a Republic not an Empire, just as it was designed to only have a citizen militia, never a standing Army! 03.08.06

Wanted: America’s new Public Enemy #1. Must be able to incite hate and elicit fear in populace.

On June 8, 2006 the Bush administration announced they had successfully killed public enemy number one, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, near Baghdad Iraq using two 500lb bombs delivered via F-16.

Zarqawi had practically every bombing and nefarious deed in Iraq pinned on him by the Bush administration, and the Pentagon even admitted they had intentionally exaggerated the threat from him in a calculated propaganda effort. Now that he is out of the picture, assuming his death isn’t just more Pentagon propaganda, then a new public enemy number one will have to be concocted since Osama bin Laden is, apparently, not important anymore.

So despite the barely concealed excitement in the rhetoric from the Bush administration’s mouthpieces and the American media outlets, the outcome is unlikely to slow the pace of killing and insurgent attacks in Iraq or elsewhere. Is the war over now? Can all the troops finally come home?! Yeah right. What has the killing of Zarqawi really changed?! Has either side lost the desire to continue the conflict? Hardly. Iraq now holds the distinction of being the most violent place on the planet.

Zarqawi had a frenetic run and it’s surprising how long he did last against the most powerful military empire in history, but his days were clearly numbered. Besides the multiple death sentences charged against him, from the Jordanian government for instance, Zarqawi had managed to alienate, or kill, nearly every potential ally in the region from tribal leaders to Shiite and even Sunni Iraqis with his ultra-violent tactics and singular and exclusionary version of Islamic law. Nonetheless he did not seem to lack for weapons, tactical allies, foot soldiers and suicide martyrs to conduct his campaign against the occupational regime in Iraq and the coalition military forces operating there.

Zarqawi knew the rules of the game he was playing. He was living by the sword and was undoubtedly aware that he would eventually die by it, yet others just like him are more than willing to take his place.

Many American’s probably aren’t aware of the massive effort that went into this operation. Thousands of people toiling for years, millions of collective hours, while burning through billions of dollars - all that effort just to find and assassinate one man! Something is seriously wrong with the United States, the national leadership isn’t even just treating the symptoms by attacking terrorism, now they’re an active participant in the sickness. The Bush administration is trying to use terrorism to defeat terrorism!

So considering the enormous resources required to kill just one threat, imagine what will be required when it’s not just one Zarqawi in a small region of a small country in a far corner of the planet, but ten Zarqawi’s all over the world. This is where we are headed because as long as persistent injustice and pervasive violence are prevalent terrorism will follow when people are given no other option to resolve their grievances. 08.06.06

The latest polls out on President Bush’s public approval rating are illuminating in more than one way. Scandal after scandal and Bush’s approval rate is now at a record low of 34%. This in itself is newsworthy but a comparison is even more informative for Richard Nixon at the height of the Watergate scandal in 1974, just before he resigned, had a 27.5% approval rating! Think about what that means for a moment. Everything Richard Nixon did to America, from bombing Cambodia and lying about it to breaking and entering for burglary, and he still had over a quarter of America standing behind him in approval!

Apparently the President of the United States can get away with doing just about anything and a significant portion of the American public will still approve of it simply because of his mystical title. Apparently the American public, or a large portion of it, would even salute and support Mickey Mouse if he wore a designer suit with an executive style haircut, just as long as he has the holy title of ‘President of the United States’. Definitely this is something to consider the next time you hear the term ‘executive privilege’. Should we be giving these people any more privileges to abuse than they already have?! 03.03.06

Iran: Another war from the peace Presidents

Can you hear the sounds? The staccato of industry at work, jet engines revving up at the end of the tarmac, and jingoistic war rhetoric heating up the airwaves. It’s getting louder and closer. High-explosive care packages courtesy of hard-working patriotic Americans toiling away day after day in some bleak Midwestern town with one Wal*Mart and one bomb factory, keeping American safe from terrorists, bad guys, GI Joe villains, and all the President’s enemies.

Here it comes. Get ready for another great big fuck you painted up in the red-white-and-blue, falling from the sky from a B-52 … but the only color that reaches the ground is bright crimson.

I vividly remember watching the storm brewing over Kosovo, another ‘peace’ president 'forced' to go to war against a tiny impoverished nation somewhere out there on that big colorful world map. In rolls the propaganda, public enemy number one is Slobodan Milosevic, play the ominous music, push the hate buttons, beat the drums, watch the bombs fall.

The air-war over Kosovo didn’t solve anything, in case you were wondering. The Balkans are still a mess riven by ethnic and religious hostilities but much like beating a hornet nest with a stick, now it’s an angry mess. It was all really about the resuscitation of NATO as a force extension of the Pentagon, removing a recalcitrant local authority from office, America and NATO getting their dirty meat hooks into the Balkans for basing purposes, and especially about the economic exploitation, and subjugation, of Eastern Europe for private gain. The war against Serbia and Kosovo had nothing to do with human rights and democracy, and even if it did the organized crime, human trafficking, and illegal drug problems (mostly ignored by the mass media) that emerged and spread out of the turmoil and damage of that conflict, completely negated the supposed benefits of the military assault in the first place. See also: Just Say No to NATO. Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, General Wesley Clark and the rest of the gang would have used any excuse they could come up with just so they could sell their war to the world long enough to get what they, and their backers, really wanted. And isn’t it amazing how enlightened those people become when it’s a different war being pushed by the opposing political party?

The Kosovo conflict was an incredible eye-opener to me because it so clearly demonstrated that Presidents, Congress and the doctors of America’s special-interest driven foreign-policy will wrap anything in the flag to get the war they want, when and where they want it, and even worse, the American public will invariably roll over, give a vacuously crisp salute, and even re-elect the same criminals. Close scrutiny of events in that foolish and disingenuous war are largely responsible for motivating me to create this Holology website you are reading now.

Fast-forward to Iraq, with just enough gap in time between the last military conflict to wipe the memory banks of the ever-gullible American public and ready them for another fiasco of foreign policy. This time public enemy number one is Saddam Hussein, he has all kinds of terrible weapons of mass destruction, even a nuclear weapons program, and he’s coming to get you America! Be afraid! Drop the bombs, go in and take over the country, mission accomplished. Now Iraqis love Israel, they are solid supporters of the new American imperial world order, and the best part is all their oil wealth has paid for the entire adventure so the American taxpayer hasn’t had to pitch in a dime! Right?!

So when the storm of high-explosive munitions fall all over Iran just remember, as Bush said, it’s not the Iranians he has a problem with just the evil regime in power over them. So keep that in mind Iran when your power goes out, your roof caves in and you’re out of a job. Don’t blame George W. Bush or America, blame your leaders for having a military and trying to defend the sovereign rights of your nation against a massive, hypocritical foreign aggressor.

Iran is doomed no matter what they do because the situation has been framed as another guilty until proven innocent show-trial just like the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that Saddam Hussein was supposed to have crammed into every mosque and coat-closet all over Iraq and had to immediately give up in order to rejoin the world community. But of course he couldn’t oblige the West and give up his secret weapons programs because he didn’t have any – and that was exactly the idea. Iran is the same story repeated, the names change but the trick is the same – prove your innocence or we will attack you preemptively. Never mind that Iran has signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has every right to establish a nuclear power program, never mind that India has not signed the NPT and already has nuclear weapons with a will to use them but nonetheless the Bush administration is stumbling over each other to sell nuclear parts and technology to them!

Just ignore the fact that the Iranians are already marginalized and practically under siege with American forces having invaded countries on both sides of them, Afghanistan and Iraq, and that, although rarely reported in the western media, another recent arrival armed with probably hundreds of nuclear warheads, wants them wiped off the map too - the Jewish Zionist state of Israel.

Never mind that suspicion is hardly grounds for incrimination, unless you are Iran and then the rules change anyway. Never mind that the latest document the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is harping on that supposedly proves, obviously, without a doubt, that the Iranians must be building nuclear bombs because they have a document that shows how to build one, even though the CIA delivered such documents to them six years ago in a (supposedly) botched operation! Just ignore that this could all be a giant setup operation against Iran.

No, just focus down on the fear – what if those Iranians, under siege, constantly threatened and surrounded by very hostile and potent military forces, what if those guys in Iran got a nuclear weapon (too), why the whole universe could collapse – it’s just that serious! Don’t entertain the notion that joining the nuclear club could make Iran a more sober and stable country; let’s just make Iran prove its innocence.

Do you dare to contradict the official orthodoxy? And what is a little pissant like you going to do about it? Are you going to try and see things from the other side’s perspective too and actually put the events into an objective context? Get real! That would be like supporting the enemy and downright anti-American to think independently! Why don’t you just shut up, keep waving the flag and go back to your minimum-wage job that doesn’t even keep pace with inflation, let the defense contractors and oil industry continue to pull down record multi-billion dollar quarterly profits that dwarf what most countries earn in an entire year and allow the smarter people in power to get on with their jobs because they know more than you do.

Oh and they sure did know so much more than everyone else about Vietnam, that’s why it was such a raging success; remember that little ‘police action’? Recent declassified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) reports reveal it all. The discrepancy between what the intelligence analysts were reporting about actual events on the ground in Vietnam, and what consecutive Presidential administrations were telling the public, is stunning. Americans for some reason continue to believe that their Presidents may lie about a sex scandal or about raising taxes but they have trouble accepting that their Presidents will lie to them about something as deadly serious as a war. Yet they do lie about war and Bush is just the latest one to get away with it. A leaked memo lends support to the already fairly obvious conclusion that George W. Bush was going to have a war on Iraq regardless of what UN inspectors found or didn’t find, regardless of international law or acceptable standards of national behavior or public protests or anything else. So much for democratic input.